Dirk Bogarde makes a devilishly vile, eyebrow-arching villain in “Cast a Dark Shadow,” a tasty tale in that most British of genres, the murder mystery.

Not that there’s much “mystery” to who our murderer is. But as dastardly as Mr. Marry and Murder for Money Edward “Teddy” Bare is, we’re riveted by who and what will be his undoing.

It’s based on an early ’50s play by the actress turned playwright and screenwriter Janet Green, whose later work included the BAFTA-nominated “social issue” dramas “Sapphire” and “Victim,” and the script for John Ford’s final film, “7 Women.”

Star Dirk Bogarde launched his career on British film by playing a sort of John Mills evil twin, with villainous turns in “The Blue Lamp”and “Cast a Dark Shadow,” playing criminals, Nazis (in “Ill Met by Moonlight” and “The Night Porter”) balanced against the wildly popular British “Doctor in the House” comedies.

In this 1955 thriller by future Bond director Lewis Gilbert, Bogarde’s Teddy Bare is married to wealthy, much-older Monica (Mona Washbourne), whom he calls “Moni,” which sounds suspiciously like “money.”

She keeps him in style in a big house with beach trips and his own Sunbeam roadster. And he reassures her with professions of love.

“I wouldn’t trade you for fifty younger ones!”

As monied Moni takes such expressions of affection seriously, she simply must make-over her will. Who needs that estranged sister in Jamaica? The house and that family money should all go to her beloved, the young man who takes her on “magic carpet rides” — which aren’t what you think. That’s him showing her the picture book of all the exotic places they’ll go.

“Bermuda!”

But the arch of the man’s eyebrow and his repeated offers of wine and stronger spirits tip us off. And before you can say “Coroner’s Court,” he’s gotten her drunk, built an alibi and staged an “accident” that takes her life.

Her “simple” housekeeper, Emmie (Kathleen Harrison) backs up Teddy’s tale. And her reward is him tricking her out of her inheritance from Moni, convincing her to continue working for free.

Teddy, who tried to talk Moni out of writing a will, which was to be signed the next day, finds himself outsmarting himself. He’s a cash-poor surviving spouse. He gets the house (he used to work in real estate). That estranged sister, Moni’s “family,” gets all the money.

Teddy must scheme his way into finding the cash to get to Jamaica to see what can be done without about that sister, or simply borrow bucks to head back to Brighton to seduce another wealther older woman.

But while brassy retired bar-owner Freda Jeffries (a crackling Margaret Lockwood) might let her head be turned by a handsome rake’s attention, she’s no pushover. She has long been on the lockout for cads who let on that “it’s the money bags they’re after, not the ‘Old Bag.'”

Has Teddy met his match?

Gilbert doesn’t let the film’s stage-thriller origins tie it down, taking us out of doors, down to the seaside, on road trips. The story skips along at a brisk pace, leaning us into the curves the way that Sunbeam takes corners on the B-roads of the day.

Robert Flemyng (“Funny Face”) plays the sneering family solicitor who isn’t shy about his suspicions. Veteran character player Robert Stainton (“The Ladykillers,” “Moby Dick”) plays a cynical old chum of Teddy’s. And Kay Walsh (“Oliver Twist,””Stage Fright”) plays a new neighbor who enters the picture.

But Bogarde is riveting as Teddy, a pitiless killer who lets us see the wheels turn and gives us a hint of the sick mind that works this way. The performance suggests that Green was tapping into that 1950s and ’60s “type,” the homicidal homosexual, in this character. Just a few years later she’d write the first mainstream British film on gay rights, “Victim.”

Green’s play gives us women as victims, ditzes, and characters with agency and cunning of their own, which makes “Cast a Dark Shadow” stand out for its era, setting up a sexy and sinister villain in a battle of wits with women he underestimates.

Sure, it’s old-fashioned and melodramatic. But “Cast a Dark Shadow” wastes no character, no scene and no screen time in its dash from the earliest plotting to the dastardly undoings, a thriller worthy of (lesser) Hitchcock but directed with plenty of panache by the filmmaker who gave us “You Only Live Twice,””Alfie” and “Educating Rita.”

Rating: Approved

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh, Mona Washbourne, Robert Flemyng and Kathleen Harrison

Credits: Directed by Lewis Gilbert, scripted by John Cresswell, based on a play by Janet Green. A Cohen Media release on Tubi, Amazon etc.

Running time: 1:22